“I agree,” said McDonnell, finally able to break in, “but what do we do about our tapes? My wife would . . . She’d take me for everything with that kind of evidence. I’d be ruined. I—I can’t deal with that, Mace.” His voice was shaking. “I’ve worked my whole life to get where I am.”
Kohler nodded. “I know, I know.” This was exactly what the Order’s infidelity requirement was supposed to do: terrify you into loyalty. “Did you get the message about the next meeting?”
“Yeah.”
“Hewitt’s gonna lay the whole thing out for us then,” Kohler said. “I can feel it. And we’re going to have to do something at that point. We can’t let him go after Jesse Wood. If we do, we’re as bad as he is.”
“So what the hell are we going to do?”
Kohler looked off into the distance, toward the darkened school buildings. There was only one thing he could think of. But it was so damn risky.
11
VIVIAN DAVIS
was a senior investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the woman who had called Bob Galloway, the chief financial officer of Central States Telecom and Satellite. African American, Vivian was tall and angular, and her blue chalk-striped suit hung loosely on her lanky frame. She was wearing three-inch heels, so when she and Christian came together in the middle of her office to shake hands, she was at eye level with him. Most tall women he knew wore flats, sometimes even stooped a little to downplay their height, but Vivian was advertising it. No problem with confrontation here, thought Christian. She wasn’t going to have any issues going after him, no matter who he was. He was here; he was prey. It was that simple.
Christian noticed that the sleeves of Vivian’s suit jacket were a little long. A mid-level government employee, she probably didn’t make much, which meant that she wouldn’t waste money on alterations because she wouldn’t wear the jacket that often. That also meant she wouldn’t have much sympathy for a man whose net worth had been estimated at half a billion dollars by
Forbes.
In fact, she’d probably hate him for it.
“Hello, Mr. Gillette.”
“Hello, Ms. Davis.”
She had a strong grip and an air of forced friendliness about her. He sensed that she didn’t want to smile but felt she had to, that she realized he was a man of power and influence, so she was going to give him at least some measure of respect before moving in on him. Like a matador’s bow to a bull before the fight.
“This is Nigel Faraday,” Christian said, gesturing to his right. “He’s the number two person at Everest Capital.”
Vivian gave Nigel the same forced smile but no handshake. “Are you an officer of Central States Telecom, too?”
Nigel shook his head.
“I thought it would be a good idea for Nigel to join us,” Christian explained. “I travel a lot, and I want you to be able to get in touch with us anytime. Besides, Nigel is more familiar than anyone else at Everest with CST’s daily operations as well as with the IPO. We just want to make sure we cooperate with you the best way we can.”
“Oh, you’ll cooperate,” Vivian said confidently.
Too confidently, almost arrogantly. Christian didn’t like people who were caught up in their power, but he bit his lip.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Faraday,” Vivian continued, “but if you’re not an officer of CST, then you have no reason to be here.” She looked back at Christian. “I didn’t ask you to come to my office today in your capacity as the chairman of Everest Capital. I asked you to come here as the chairman of CST. I’m sorry, but Mr. Faraday will have to wait outside.”
Christian reached out and grabbed Nigel’s arm. He’d been turning to go. “I really think it would be helpful to have another person here, just so there’s no misunderstanding later on about what was said.” This wasn’t starting off well, but he wasn’t going to back down. “I hope you understand,” he said politely. She couldn’t force Faraday to leave. He knew that—so did she. She’d been trying to con him, and it irritated him that she thought he was so naïve. “It’s my right to have another person in here with me. You know that.”
“Already spoke to your lawyer, did you? Worried about something?”
“I’m careful, Ms. Davis,” he said calmly. “Nigel and I manage billions of dollars of other people’s money. We have to be careful.”
“Then I’m surprised you didn’t bring that lawyer of yours along.” She moved behind her desk and sat down, motioning for them to sit in the chairs in front of the desk. “Wouldn’t that have been the best thing to do if you were worried?”
“I didn’t say I was worried,” Christian answered sharply. “
You
did.” He glanced at the fresh flower in the buttonhole of her lapel. A pink carnation. Her way of telling you she was a friendly person—outside the office. “I said I was careful.”
Vivian flipped through a spiral-bound notebook, scanning several pages, then leaned forward, putting her elbows on the desk. “Let me get right to the point, Mr. Gillette. I’m almost certain we’re going to initiate an investigation of CST. We’ve received what we believe is credible information that there may have been some serious misrepresentations in your S-1, in the initial public offering document you and Everest put out six months ago.”
“Let me get right to
my
point,” Christian said. “The company, its investment bankers, and its attorneys put those documents together. I’m sure you’re very familiar with the investment bankers and the attorneys on the deal—top-shelf all the way. It wasn’t Everest who put out the S-1, it was the company.”
“The company you’re chairman of, Mr. Gillette. You’re supposed to know
everything
that’s going on at a company you’re chairman of.”
“Oh, come on,” Nigel broke in. “That’s ridiculous. How can Christian possibly know everything that’s going on at a company as large as CST?”
“Let me rephrase,” Vivian offered. “Everything
important
that’s going on. An initial public offering certainly falls into that category.”
“What kind of misrepresentations are you talking about?” Christian asked.
“About your net income, about your earnings per share,” Vivian answered. “The key things investors look at when they’re trying to decide whether or not to buy your shares. To get to the heart of this whole thing, Mr. Gillette, we believe you significantly overstated revenues at CST during the three years you owned the company before you took it public. We think you’re still doing it.” She glanced over at Nigel, then back at Christian. “And we all know what overstating revenue means. It means your net income and therefore your earnings per share figures are overstated, as well—
way
overstated. Meaning the stock price is too high because CST isn’t doing as well as you’d have us believe it is.” Her eyes narrowed. “We think the overstatements were intentional, too, not just an oversight on some clerk’s part. Not just a one-time mistaken entry in the books somewhere. We think this is serial fraud and that several senior people at CST knew what was going on.” She paused. “Possibly you.”
Christian’s eyes moved smoothly to hers.
“That’s absurd!” Nigel shouted. “Christian’s got one of the cleanest reputations in the business world. You can’t possibly—”
Christian reached over and touched Nigel’s shoulder, silencing him immediately. “Where exactly did you get your information?” he asked.
“Can’t tell you.”
“I have a right to know who’s accusing me.”
Vivian leaned back and smiled. “Maybe you should have brought your attorney with you after all.”
“Look, I’m not here to admit or deny anything. I can’t: I don’t have the facts. I don’t even really know what you’re talking about because overstating revenues can mean lots of different things. But I do know that as long as we were following generally accepted accounting principles, which I believe we were, we weren’t overstating anything.” He was thinking clearly, not rattled at all by her aggressiveness or the situation. It was a gift to be able to act calmly and think clearly under pressure, a gift from his father. He’d seen Clayton do it under fire several times—on TV and in person. Only once had he seen his father lose his cool, fall completely apart. “What I will say is this. We’re extremely diligent at CST—at all our companies—about financial controls. We have an audit committee that works with our independent accounting firm to make certain every measure possible is taken to protect the integrity of our financial statements. That’s the only way our public shareholders can really judge how well the company is doing, and we want them to have as much information as they need to make those judgments.” He nodded toward Nigel. “As Nigel said, I can’t know everything that goes on at CST—it’s too big a company. But if you tell me you think there’s a problem with the way we account for revenues, I’ll do everything I can to find out if you’re right. I promise you that.”
Vivian clapped slowly several times. “Nice speech, Mr. Gillette. I liked it a lot.” She broke into a broad smile. “I think one of the senior executives of MCI Worldcom made almost exactly that same speech the first time we brought him in. Said there was no way he could know everything that was going on, but he’d help us get to the bottom of anything that was.” She smiled. “He ended up getting ten years behind bars.”
“Christian’s the chairman of twenty companies, Ms. Davis,” Nigel spoke up. “You know he’s not involved in the details at CST. There’s no way he could be.”
“Maybe not, but maybe he shouldn’t be chairman of twenty companies, either.” She checked her notebook once more. “How much did Everest make on the CST initial public offering?”
Christian hesitated, knowing how this was going to sound. “Four hundred million.”
“And how much of that did you take home, Mr. Gillette?”
He stared at her for a moment, then glanced at her jacket sleeves. “Twenty.”
HEWITT WATCHED
his grandson raise the rifle and peer through the scope, sighting in a magnificent twelve-point buck. The big deer was grazing in front of a grove of live oaks several hundred yards away. He marveled at how steady his grandson’s hand was. They were standing, so Three Sticks had nothing to brace the gun against but his shoulder. Still, Hewitt couldn’t detect any motion of the gun tip. It was as though he was looking at a photograph.
Hewitt loved Three Sticks. Loved him more than anything in the world. More than being CEO of U.S. Oil, more than this ranch, more than all his money, even more than being master of the Order. He loved the boy more than life itself. He had sons, but, for whatever reason, they hadn’t made much of themselves. For all intents and purposes, his grandson had become his only heir.
He watched the fourteen-year-old take a deep breath, let out half of it, hesitate a moment, then calmly squeeze the trigger. Exactly as Hewitt had taught him to do a couple of years ago in a corral behind one of the big barns on the ranch, using tin cans as targets and a little twenty-two as a weapon.
When the gun exploded, Hewitt’s gaze snapped left, just in time to see the buck stagger backward a few feet, then bound away into the trees.
“I got him good!” the boy shouted. “In the lungs. He won’t go far.”
That was the thing about deer. You could blow their lungs—even their hearts—apart with a thirty-caliber shell and they’d still run, still race off into the underbrush as though they hadn’t been hit. Something about them kept the blood pumping even though their hearts were gone. But as long as you hit them in the heart or the lungs, you could follow the blood trail right to the spot where they finally collapsed.
Hewitt and the boy jumped on their horses and galloped toward the grove of trees, quickly finding the spot where the buck had been grazing when he was hit. The grass just inside the shade of the elms was stained red, and, sure enough, there were spatters leading off into the trees. They trotted into the grove, along the blood trail until they reached the buck. Even though it lay spread out on the ground, it was still magnificent.
Hewitt drew a forty-four Magnum from his shoulder holster and put another bullet into the deer’s body, chuckling as his grandson hit the deck in shock at the sound of the explosion. The boy had dismounted too quickly, impatient as all young men are to claim a trophy. Hewitt had seen a buck this size—apparently dead—suddenly stand and gore its killer before dropping for the final time.
He dismounted slowly, wincing as his boots hit the hard ground, feeling the arthritis in his joints. He watched the boy kneel down beside the deer, grab the antlers, and lift the head off the ground. There was foam all over the soft black mouth and a trickle of blood running down one nostril. It was a hell of a trophy.
“Awesome,” Hewitt said proudly, shaking his grandson’s hand, then pushing the brim of his Stetson back. “Awesome,” he repeated quietly.
“Thanks, Granddad.”
Hewitt smiled, pride welling up inside him, suddenly wishing he could live forever, wishing he could watch this boy all the way through his life. Three Sticks had a brilliant future ahead of him. Already an excellent athlete, he’d scored off the charts on his mental aptitude tests as well. There was nothing this boy couldn’t accomplish with the right mentoring—and the world staying the way it was.
THE HEADQUARTERS
of Black Brothers Allen was at 9 Wall Street, on the south side of the famous narrow lane just west of Federal Hall—where George Washington had taken the first presidential oath of office. The high-rise building housing the secretive firm was set on almost the same piece of real estate the three founders had chosen in 1860 to start the investment bank. The original building had been replaced twenty years ago by a taller, slicker-looking edifice, but many of the artifacts from that first structure were kept in a museum on the fifty-second floor just off the boardroom. The museum was accessible only to the firm’s management committee—the top nine executives.
The artifacts included the headdress worn by Man Bear at his execution. Only Trenton Fleming knew the significance of that. Everyone else on the management committee just assumed it was some trinket one of the founders had brought back from a trip out West long ago. Fleming knew because he was the great-great-grandson of Prescott Avery Fleming and George Ellis Black, the two founding members of the Order. One of Prescott Fleming’s sons had married one of George Black’s daughters and the families had been inextricably linked forever. Just as they were linked to the Hewitt family—Samuel was his second cousin. And the Laird family—Franklin was his third cousin. There were relationships like that everywhere, but they were kept very quiet. It would have been a challenge if the world knew that the man who ran Black Brothers Allen, one of the most powerful investment banks in the world, was related to the man who ran the Federal Reserve.
Christian and Allison followed a receptionist into an elegantly decorated conference room on the tenth floor—the executive floor. When the woman had poured them both drinks, she smiled and politely bid them good-bye, then closed the door behind her.